A little oil needed
by The Horseman
Summary: Sequel to 'Winning the bet'. Beka decides to get her revenge


Summary: A sequel to 'Winning the bet' (which you might want to read first). Beka decides to get her revenge  
  
Notes: Beka/Rommie. F/F Fanfic, so if that isn't your thing/you'll get something chopped off for reading it, I would suggest BBC News' excellent coverage of the American accounting scandals.  
  
Four_horsemen_of_the_apocalypse@hotmail.com for any constructive criticism. Anybody who wants to archive this, you're completely insane. But if you really want to, then go ahead. Just tell me about it first. I like to keep track of my fics  
  
Disclaimer: Everything canon - theirs. Thorn Belcroft and the Saffiarians belong to me by intellectual copyright. Far too poor to be worth suing.  
  
  
  
A little oil needed  
  
By the Horseman  
  
Observation Deck, Andromeda Ascendant, 1032hrs  
  
Old Earth Calendar - 7th April 3721  
  
"Until the late 2490's, this was the site of the main command post in most Commonwealth ships. The radical redesign initiated breasts by the genius ship designer Thorn Belcroft...."  
  
A brief second passed, in which Rommie, deep in concentration, failed to notice that her tour party had completely stopped behind her. Eventually, the low hum from the party's internal debate jogged her out of her touring trance and she looked to where the Saffiarians had stopped behind her.  
  
They stopped talking the minute that she turned around, and an uneasy tension hung there for a second. The Saffiarians just stood there, and Rommie played back the last few seconds from her auditory memory. She hadn't done anything unusual. Or at least, she couldn't remember it. Standard High Guard tour about the Andromeda class ship.  
  
Eventually, after some nudging from his fellow countrymen, the Saffiarian Ambassador's aide edged forwards. Rommie stood there, unable to tell what all the fuss was about  
  
He paused, coughed a few times, and raised his head to look at her  
  
"You said...a word in the middle of your commentary"  
  
Rommie raised her eyebrow, and replayed the last minutes of her memory back, audio and visual. Nope, not a thing out of place. She raised her eyebrow in her customary way.  
  
Different options ran through her CPU within a second, each with it's own merits. She couldn't correct the man. The aliens took badly to being corrected, and Dylan had made it very clear how much he wanted the Saffiarians in the new Commonwealth. To the extend of publicly looking up the transit time to the nearest Magog world and how to transport someone down to it  
  
She could accept that she was in the wrong. But she wasn't. She had clearly replayed all the words spoken in the last five minutes, and none of it was out of the ordinary. She had given the standard tour, the Saffiarians hadn't asked any questions. Normally sociological response given the species.  
  
She could, of course, wipe out the entire collection in 45.9 seconds. But that wouldn't exactly make Dylan happy  
  
She decided to use something that Beka had been teaching her  
  
She would use her poker face  
  
"A breasts word?"  
  
The collective shock of the Saffiarians was palpable. They converged in on themselves, like frightened wildebeest in front of a tiger  
  
"She said it again" they whispered. "She said the word again"  
  
Rommie was starting to get irritated. The collective prudishness of the Saffiarians had been grating on her nerves for a while  
  
"I'm breasts sorry" she replied, to even more outraged fake whispering, "But I breasts can't breasts see what you're breasts talking about. My audio breasts memory doesn't breasts record anything out of the breasts ordinary"  
  
The Saffiarians were beginning to look like they were about to suffer a collective heart attack. Rommie tried to reassure them, but they just seemed to get more aggravated the more she spoke. All nine of them clustered into the corner of the deck, and Rommie couldn't get them to come back out of their self-protected fortress, no matter what she said. It just seemed to make matters worse  
  
Eventually, she ran out of ideas, and summoned her holographic self.  
  
Who wouldn't answer her sister's requests  
  
Godammit, she swore. At this rate, there wouldn't be much point of the Saffiarians being in the Commonwealth. Their ambassador would be dead of starvation within days. Every time they began to edge out, she tried to encourage them and they slid back in. It was maddening  
  
She was just about to leave it, when Dylan burst through the door  
  
"Rommie, what the hell is going on!" he thundered, his attention split between whatever his previous problem was, and the site of the Saffiarians huddled in the corner.  
  
"OK", he stopped to rub his temples, "One problem at a time. Why are our distinguished guests cowering in the corner of the observation deck?"  
  
Rommie tried to explain  
  
"I breasts don't know breasts Captain breasts Hunt. They think breasts that I'm saying some breasts word every time I breasts speak"  
  
Dylan stood before her, gazing at her with the look of a man who was having a very long day  
  
"I think you better take it from the top"  
  
------------  
  
It was after Dylan forced Harper to do a full diagnostic on Rommie that she decided that she was going to kill Beka  
  
It wasn't going to be that hard after all. She was a class B-39 avatar. Hell, she was stronger than Tyr  
  
Simple snapping of the third and fourth vertebrae would break her spinal cord and stop her heart. Wouldn't take more than a few seconds. And it might get her to stop saying 'breasts' all the time  
  
It was now impossible to talk, she was unable to say anything but 'breasts'. They'd tried getting her to write something down, but that just came out as endless repetitions of the word nipples. And her holographic sister appeared to be reciting 11th century Russian love poetry in the medideck. Beka had apparently taken good advantage of her recent diagnostic to install some programs of her own  
  
Harper had identified Beka. The virus in Rommie's system had all her programming quirks on it. She'd have to move fast though. Dylan had set off after Beka with what looked like murder in his eyes  
  
She ran through the list of places where her lover would be. It would have to be somewhere quiet, peaceful and most importantly the last place on Earth that Dylan would think of looking  
  
---------  
  
It had always amused Rommie how Beka thought that she didn't know about the secret compartments on the Maru. She had to admit, they were designed beautifully, great at deflecting any dodgy sensors on a run-down port asteroid  
  
With the pride of the Commonwealth High Guard, they weren't so great  
  
She hotwired the entrance to give way at her command, making sure that none of the rest of the crew knew that she was there.  
  
Beka Valentine was hers  
  
Rommie began a through sweep of the Maru, looking for thermal energy. About halfway down, she found it. In one of the compartments designed to hold the crew when the bad guys came calling  
  
She tiptoed up to it, making sure that Beka couldn't hear her, and knocked three times on the wall of the hiding place  
  
No response. How could she get Beka to know that it was her, not Dylan? She realised, smiled, and began tapping.  
  
Inside her narrow hole, Beka heard Morse being tapped on the entrance to the compartment. She dug up her rusty Morse from her memory, and began translating the taps.  
  
"B" she mumbled under her breath, "R". "E". By the time that Rommie had begun A, Beka was already moving out of the compartment. She crawled out of the hiding place unto the cold metal of the gangway, and turned to face Rommie  
  
"I'd guess you'd like an explanation? Possibly revenge?"  
  
Rommie nodded, unwilling to satisfy Beka's sense of humour by saying breasts again. She wondered why Beka was naked. Probably because of the heat in the compartments. They were right next to the engine.  
  
She couldn't be planning anything, could she?  
  
Beka strolled the few feet between her and Rommie like a cat, wearing nothing except a broad, Cheshirish smile. She came right up to Rommie, and placed a finger over the avatar's lips.  
  
"Think of it as payback" she told her. "For all those bets you won. I'll take whatever flack Dylan throws at us"  
  
Rommie was about to argue with her, but she suppressed the urge. It was no good in her current position  
  
"Oh yeah, and this is especially payback for three days ago. Nipples"  
  
Rommie's face suddenly became completely expressionless, and she stood there like an automaton. She looked Beka straight in the eyes  
  
"How may I serve you, oh great mistress of this avatar?"  
  
Beka smiled. The obedience programming was still there. She began to lead Rommie down towards the engine. Down there, there was a secret hold big enough for the two of them. Packed full with Beka's favourite toys  
  
And until they were found, she and Rommie were going to have some fun 


End file.
